Harwood, Linda
(2023)
The Impact of Subjective Norms Upon Faculty Reporting of College Student Plagiarism: A Theory of Planned Behaviour Approach.
Doctor of Education thesis, University of Liverpool.
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Abstract
A faculty member’s decision whether to report college student plagiarism is shaped by many considerations that can be categorized into the three main psychosocial categories of the theory of planned behaviour: personal attitudes and beliefs, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control about performing the target behaviour. This research study sought to explore the impact of subjective norms on reporting student plagiarism in different School contexts within the same institution by first describing the reporting context of each School in terms of its members’ values (a background factor), attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and reporting praxis, and then by focusing on peripatetic faculty members’ perceptions of each School’s subjective norms and reporting behaviour within each. Because these faculty members’ values, attitudes, and perceived behavioural control would remain the same, their reporting behaviour in different School contexts could suggest the impact of subjective norms in each. Consequently, an advanced embedded convergent mixed-methods approach was used. This study’s purpose was to contribute to the understanding of the complexity of student plagiarism management and its related policy operationalisation. Faculty members from three Schools within the same rural college in western Canada were surveyed, in part one for their ranking of life-guiding values using the Short Schwartz Values Survey (SSVS), and in part two for their specific attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and reporting intention and actual reporting behaviour. To answer the first two research questions about each School’s reporting context, I combined the survey results with the data collected from the semi-structured interviews of School Chairs to describe each School’s reporting context. To answer the third research question about the impact of subjective norms on reporting behaviour, seven peripatetic faculty were interviewed about their experiences with policy operationalization within their home and non-home Schools, and the data was thematically analyzed through a modified TPB lens. It was found that these subjective norms did impact peripatetic faculty in their reporting intention and behaviour across Schools and that the majority did adjust their response to what constituted reportable student plagiarism within each School context. This finding indicates that a School Chair’s team-building leadership can play a vital role in shaping subjective norms about an issue, thereby influencing a target behaviour. This thesis also acknowledges artificial intelligence platforms, such as ChatGPT, as potentially the next major issue in student plagiarism management and concludes that faculty must teach and encourage authentic writing skills to mitigate its misuse and thereby to continue to promote academic integrity.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctor of Education) |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Academic integrity; artificial intelligence; student plagiarism; policy operationalisation; Short Values Survey; Theory of Planned Behaviour; subjective norms |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Histories, Languages and Cultures |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Feb 2024 16:00 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Feb 2024 16:00 |
| DOI: | 10.17638/03177230 |
| Supervisors: |
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| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3177230 |
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